Of all the forces that converged to doom Romney in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, none may be as disconcerting for Republicans as the attacks on Romney’s private equity work — an offensive that caught Romney off-guard and triggered a damaging conversation about his vast personal wealth.

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Even as Romney blasted his assailants — Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and a pro-Gingrich super PAC — as anti-capitalism, he also left sympathetic GOP elites agog with a series of missteps that bolstered the charge that he’s an out-of-touch mega-millionaire.

Rather than cheerfully giving a detailed account of his Bain career, as he sees it, Romney grumbled in one debate that it was “strange, on a stage like this with Republicans, having to describe how private equity and venture capital work.” He fumbled questions about whether he’d release his tax returns, gave shifting answers on how many jobs he’d helped create and told a crowd earlier this month that he liked being able to fire service providers.

Now, the Bain issue is front and center, wrapping up an array of Democratic and Republican criticisms of Romney in a neat, single-syllable package. And as Romney seeks to regroup from his weekend defeat, Republicans are asking: Why wasn’t he better prepared to handle all this?

“As a result of his post-New Hampshire problems and the South Carolina results, Gov. Romney will get better on Bain and tighten up on taxes or he won’t be our nominee,” said Republican strategist Tucker Eskew, a veteran of South Carolina politics. “By the same perspective, Speaker Gingrich will be challenged going into Florida to defend some of the issues he hasn’t yet nailed down, like Freddie Mac. Republicans are trying to settle on our lead warrior, and we aren’t there yet.”

South Carolina political hand Richard Quinn, a former John McCain and Jon Huntsman adviser, said the combination of Bain and Romney’s tax returns had voters asking: “Where has he made all this money? Where’s he got it? What’s he hiding?”

“This guy is the poster boy for the kind of campaign that Barack Obama is prepared to wage,” said Quinn, who supported Gingrich in the last days of the South Carolina race. “He started out with this brand as the flip-flopper who they don’t really trust … On top of that, the newer criticisms of him were fed by those images of him saying things like, ‘I like to fire people.’ Everybody understands it was taken out of context, but in politics, context doesn’t matter.”

Romney’s camp sees the Bain debate quite differently: Far from a drag on their candidate, Romney strategists contend that the former Massachusetts governor cemented his status as the pro-growth candidate in the race through his duel with Gingrich and Perry.

While South Carolina didn’t turn out as the Romney camp had hoped, it says the private equity fight leaves Gingrich on territory that will be exceedingly difficult to defend over a long GOP primary.